arian feeling is very welcome. Some of his
unpublished "Notes on the Labour Question" (quoted by Mr. Salt in his
able study of Jefferies) are worthy of Ruskin. This, for instance, is
vigorously put:--

"'But they are paid to do it,' says Comfortable Respectability (which
hates anything in the shape of a 'question,' glad to slur it over
somehow). They are paid to do it. Go down into the pit yourself,
Comfortable Respectability, and try it, as I have done, just one hour
of a summer's day, then you will know the preciousness of a vulgar
pot of beer! Three and sixpence a day is the price of these brawny
muscles, the price of the rascally sherry you parade before your
guests in such pseudo-generous profusion. One guinea a week--that is
one stall at the Opera. But why do they do it? Because Hunger and
Thirst drive them. These are the fearful scourges, the whips worse
than the knout, which lie at the back of Capital, and give it its
power. Do you suppose these human beings, with minds, and souls, and
feelings, would not otherwise repose on the sweet sward, and hearken
to the song-birds as you may do on your lawn at Cedar Villa?"

Really the passage might have come out of _Fors Clavigera_; it is
Ruskinian not only in sentiment, but in turn of expression. Ruskin
impressed Jefferies very considerably, one would gather, and did much to
open up his mind and broaden his sympathies. Making allowance for
certain inconsistencies of mood, hope for and faith in the future, and
weary scepticism, there is a fine stoicism about the philosophy of
Jefferies. His was not the temperament of which optimists are made. His
own terrible ill-health rendered him keenly sensitive to the pain and
misery of the world. His deliberate seclusion from his fellow-men--more
complete in some ways than Thoreau's, though not so ostensible--threw him
back upon his own thoughts, made him morbidly introspective.

Then the aesthetic Idealism which dominated him made for melancholy, as
it invariably does. The Worshipper at the shrine of Beauty is always
conscious that

". . . . In the very temple of Delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine."

He realizes the tragic ineffectuality of his aspiration--

"The desire of the moth for the star,"

as Shelley expresses it, and in this line of poetry the mood finds
imperishable expression.

But the melancholy that visits the Ide